Wild West Days

Would you read a book with an opening sentence like this?

“Rowdy Rhodes leaned back in the whorehouse bathtub, a cheroot jutting from between his teeth, and sighed as he waited for the chill of a high-country winter to seep out of his bones.”

Come on, now. Whorehouse, cheroot, and Rowdy, all in one sentence?

We expect hokey in a Western novel, but isn’t this stretching it a little?

Would a real cowboy smoke a cheroot? An oily gambler might, but a real cowboy would chomp down on a real cigar the way Rush Limbaugh does when he’s on a tear against Obama and liberals.

Or has any real cowboy in the history of cowboys ever been named Rowdy? I don’t think so. In the Old West, a man could get killed by calling another cowboy a sissy name like Rowdy.

Besides, there’s only one real Rowdy and that’s Bay Area product Clint Eastwood who co-opted the name in a really ancient television show, Rawhide.

Clint is the only guy I know who could sit in a whorehouse with a cheroot between his teeth and say, “Hi, My name’s Rowdy.”

By the way, I stumbled across a grainy Dirty Harry on an obscure channel last night. The movie was filmed in San Francisco, Larkspur, and Mill Valley, to name a few Bay Area shooting locations.

And Clint actually had real teeth. You could clearly see them in the close ups. Those were the days before complete makeovers, and somehow the naturalness was oddly appealing.

I don’t plan to reveal the title of the Western novel that is the source of the aforementioned opening line or the author’s name. I haven’t read the book yet, and it would be unfair to comment on it without a thorough reading.

That may never happen. It’s been three months since I grabbed the book from a Safeway rack, and so far I haven’t been able to get past that sentence.

Technorati Tags: Clint Eastwood,Dirty Harry,Rawhide,Larkspur,Mill Valley,San Francisco

Would You Eat a Raw Hamburger?

When she was a kid, my sister loved a raw hamburger pattie with nothing on it but salt and pepper. She also drank a lot of buttermilk, another odd-tasting substance.

Her likes were a topic of family conversation, which is odd considering that her childhood preferences were normal compared to the stuff some of our relatives relished.

An eccentric uncle loved a dish that would actually gag someone unfamiliar with its contents. Even now, thinking about it makes my throat tight.

He’d fill a plate with beans, empty a bottle of mustard in it followed by about ten tablespoons of sugar, then stir the concoction round and round until it was nothing more than a yellowish paste with lumps in it. The stuff could easily have substituted for the green pea soup coming out of Linda Blair’s mouth in the movie The Exorcist.

My mother’s favorite food was tortillas and beans for breakfast, assembled from her own stash of homemade tortillas. Yes, it sounds odd, but that’s what she wanted. The odd part was that she wasn’t Mexican.

I’m uncertain about my dad’s favorite food. When I was a kid, I never actually saw him eat anything. Maybe that’s why he was as skinny as a rail. Metabolism or diet? Who knows. Later in his life he developed a ravenous taste for kimchee, another discordant family trait since he wasn’t Korean any more than my mom was Mexican.

My granddad’s eating habits were equally mysterious. He was thin also, but I have no idea of his culinary tastes beyond a bowl of Post Toasties and milk for breakfast. I have a hunch that he ate out a lot. For a reason.

A few years after his wife passed on, he connected with a neighborhood widow. His daughter went berserk. To avoid her  conniption fits, he’d leave home in the direction of downtown, circle the block, stop along the way at a small store for a bag of groceries, and then walk to the widow’s house, thinking he was fooling his daughter. He was either too dumb or too enamored to understand that her house was across the street from ours.

My own preference as a kid was for a well-cooked hamburger with coleslaw on it. Today I hate slaw, cole or otherwise, but that was then and now is now. In between I was exposed to sophisticated culinary dishes prepared by the world’s greatest Army chefs. My personal preference was a chic meal called SOS.

SOS is short for a graphic image commonly used among rough and ready men who delight in shocking snobs. I hate to use the term because it is so coarse, but it’s use will serve to illustrate my point. This tasty dish was known far and wide as “shit on a shingle.”

The sound of it as I say it aloud brings to mind a cartoon: three people sitting at a table, a small boy, a mother, and a father. The mother says, “I don’t care what daddy called it in the Army, you’re gonna eat it!”

Every family has its own kind of food that it loves in the privacy of it’’s own home but hesitates to mention in polite society.

What’s yours?

Technorati Tags: The Exorcist,Linda Blair,Coleslaw,Kimchee. Eating Habits

The Sporting Life

Did you know there is a Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame located on California Street in San Francisco?

It’s a non-profit charitable organization established to honor sports legends to benefit youth sports programs. The entire site is a goldmine of information for those interested in sports.

The section of the Hall of Fame site that intrigued me was its Inductees page. Here you can find the names of many Bay Area sports heroes, the dates of their induction, their sport, and the location of the Plaque awarded to them. You can also click on their names and find pictures and brief biographies. As I scrolled through the list of names, I recognized all of them, but a few were more familiar than others.

The very first name of the list was Frankie Albert. He was a quarterback for Stanford and later the Niners QB. His trademark touch was a leap in the air to throw a pass. When I was a kid, I watched him play in the old Kezar Stadium. He starred in a movie called The Spirit of Stanford.

Then there was flamboyant Max Baer. He was the heavyweight boxing champion of the world who lost his title to the Cinderella Man, Jimmy Braddock. Although born in Omaha, Max grew up in Livermore and began his boxing career in Oakland. He was widely known as a playboy and appeared in several movies, most notably The Prizefighter and the Lady, which coincidentally was on HBO today. Max, Sr. was the father of Max, Jr. of Beverly Hillbillies fame and the older brother of Buddy Baer, also a boxer and a Hollywood actor.

Of course John Brodie is included. John later became a professional golfer and I once met him briefly on the course when a friend introduced us. He is about a foot and a half taller than me. And a better golfer, I might add.

Two of the DiMaggio brothers, Dom and Joe, were both inductees. As a Yankee, Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper, ran off a string of hits in 56 consecutive games, a record unbroken still. Overshadowed by his brother, Joe, Dom nevertheless was a star outfielder with the Boston Red Sox. A third brother, Vince, also played baseball and enjoyed an outstanding career with the Cincinnati Reds, New York Giants, the Pirates, and the Phillies. He hasn’t been inducted, but one certainly hopes that he will someday.

There are more heroes than we have space to talk about here. Suffice to say, almost all of the sports are represented, Baseball, Figure Skating, Tennis, Swimming, Golf, Basketball, Track, Horse Racing, and Boxing.

The Hall of Fame makes it clear that the Bay Area has produced more than its share of sports heroes.

Technorati Tags: Kezar Stadium,Frankie Albert,Max Baer,The DiMaggio Brothers,John Brodie,Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame

Tell It to the Marines

The Bay Area is literally swimming in recruits these days despite it’s reputation as a hotbed of anti-military sentiment and a flap over the Marine Corps Recruiting Station in Berkeley.

However, contrary to outside perceptions about the Bay Area’s anti-Americanism, the facts tell a different story, as this report from he Contra Costa Times informs us.

The Times has assembled a phenomenal collection of military enlistment statistics from every Bay Area County and all of the area’s major cities. Here’s how some selected communities shape up. The numbers represent first time enlistees only. No data were reported for those reenlisting after having previously served.

• Berkeley, 15
• Fremont, 101
• Hayward, 100
• Oakland, 89
• Pittsburg, 39
• San Pablo, 30
• Napa, 47
• San Francisco, 182
• Manteca, 90
• Daly City, 66
• Mountain View, 24
• San Jose, 369
• Fairfield, 93
• Vacaville, 131
• Vallejo, 65
• Santa Rosa, 100

Unfortunately, the Times report gives no indication of the time period of the data or a breakout by service, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Army, or Coast Guard.

Even so, some of the data surprised me. What is it about Vacaville, for instance? Two possibilities come to mind. The town is about ten miles from Travis Air Force Base. Maybe the sons and daughters of airmen are enlisting.

Or could it be connected to those 8,888 people in state prisons in Vacaville. The armed services have discussed lowering enlistment requirements regarding certain crimes. Maybe the new policy is in effect now.

Mountain View and Palo Alto seem anomalous, also. They are situated in the heart of Silicon Valley with its millionaires, expensive toys, elite schools, and out-of-sight real estate. One wonders.

And Santa Rosa with 100. What’s the deal with Santa Rosa? This is a predominantly middle-income town as is Napa, although Napa has its share of rich out-of-towners with ritzy Tuscan villas. Every time I drive through Napa Valley, I expect Diane Lane to leap out of a vinyard.

And how about San Francisco and San Jose? Popular mythology tells us that men and women from lower income areas are the most likely to enlist. Surely no one residing in Pacific Heights signed up. Perhaps if we knew more about the geographical distribution of the enlistees in SF and SJ, we might be able to make sense of the numbers.

All in all, it seems to me that the data in the Times report add up to a picture out of sync with Heartland perceptions.

My guess is that the sensational media reports about Berkeley and the Marines have something to do with it.

So, all of you inlanders in garden spots like Cyclopic, Arizona, and No Where, Texas, Tell it to the Marines.

La Bamba

This is one of my favorite movies. It’s a 1987 version of late 1950’s rock and roller, Ritchie Valens, who died in an airplane accident when he was eighteen years old.

Lou Diamond Phillips starred as Richie, and Esai Morales played Ritchie’s older half-brother, Bob.

Coincidentally, Lou Diamond Phillips was born at the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines in 1962, eons-times-two before I landed there in a one-engine airplane after a sometimes-scary flight over cloud covered mountains.

According to his bio, Phillips is part Filipino along with several other Ethnic DNA strands. He was raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, home of another large Naval base.

La Bamba was filmed largely in and around the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles and in San Jose.

The soundtrack included the title song, La Bamba, Sleepwalk (one of my favorites), Donna, Come on let’s go, We belong together (another fav), Lonely teardrops, and several more lesser known Valens renditions.

The first time I saw the widescreen version of the movie, I laid back and enjoyed the music and the performance of Esai Morales as Ritchie’s brother, Bob. Esai convinced me that he actually was Bob. And, the next time around, I paid more attention to the secondary plot lines.

In my mind, I read this movie as the story of a tumultuous relationship between two brothers, one of whom, Ritchie, was obviously the favorite of their mother.

Bob loves Ritchie, but his simmering resentment boils over several times when he attempts to establish himself as a member of the only family he knows. We could read a little Cain and Abel in their relationship.

I’ve seen this movie several times and each time, I enjoy the music as much as ever. Now, however, the treatment seems trite, and one suspects that the real story of Ritchie’s short life has been glossed over, leaving only a Hollywood feel-good illusion.

This is a memory that just popped in my head as I watched a little TV. I have the soundtrack and think I’ll listen awhile.

Technorati Tags: Rock and Roll,Lou Diamond Phillips,Esai Morales

That’s Entertainment

Aside from their location in the Bay Area, what do the following have in common?

• Concord
• D Street, Petaluma
• Fourth Street, San Rafael
• Corner South Van Ness and Mission, SF
• Miller Avenue, Mill Valley
• Pinole
• Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley
• Redwood High School, Larkspur

Answer: All were filming locations for the movie American Graffiti. In the movie, the Mel’s Diner scenes were filmed at Van Ness and Mission in a building since demolished.

Where did I get this info? One of my favorite sites is IMDb. That’s Internet Movie Database, an accumulation of everything you ever wanted to know about movies and television shows, including television air dates.

Right now, my interest is in filming locations in and around the Bay Area, and IMDb lists a few thousand, at least three in the tiny enclave of Pinole where my sister once lived and one on Fourth Street in San Rafael, the street of our residence a few years ago.

Slightly beyond the Bay Area but not totally divorced from it, the San Joaquin River delta area has also been the location of several movies, most notable perhaps, Cool Hand Luke.

You may or may not remember this scene from the movie. The Captain (Strother Martin) whops Luke on the head with a billy club. Luke collapses and rolls down an embankment. The Captain looks at Luke and then at the prison road gang. After a beat, the Captain utters the defining bit of dialogue in the movie, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” This movie was filmed in and around Lodi, Stockton, San Joaquin Valley, and the Sacramento River Delta.

Here are some more major filming locations along with the number of movies and television shows filmed in whole or in part at those locations, along with one or two notable films.

San Francisco
1,940 films and television shows. Notable films: Bullitt, the Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Oakland
263 titles. Notable films: Mrs. Doubtfire, The Principal

Berkeley
161 titles. Notable films: The Graduate

San Rafael
93 titles. Notables: Batman, Oklahoma!

Petaluma
44 titles. Notables: Peggy Sue Got Married

Sonoma
41 titles. Notables: The Birds, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Napa
58 titles. Notables: Falcon Crest TV Series, Apocalypse Now, Rambo First Blood Part II

These sparse bits and pieces of trivia haven’t made a dent in IMDb’s collection. My guess is that your town or community or one nearby is included somewhere in IMBd. Check things out by clicking here.

If you happen to be interested in towns beyond civilization, the Location Browser covers the world. Manila? 452 titles. Nashville? (Just joking. It’s the center of the civilized world) 394 titles. Much more.

Or if you’re into trivial facts other than filming locations, IMDb is a golden source for information about cast and crew, bios, memorable lines, goofs, you name it.

You want pictures? Here is a non-IMDb site with many pictures of the filming locations. One of the better known ones included here is Bullitt with its chase scenes up and down and over the hills of San Francisco.

Beautiful scenery.

The Bullpen

So, la Gavaratta spent $139,700 on a bullpen.

He adopted the idea from New York City’s Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg. I wonder what kind of bullpen we’re talking about.

• A holding cell for irate citizens, nosy, impudent reporters, and ambitious senior staffers who aspire to the status of Alpha Mayor?
• A place where bored relief pitchers sit on wooden benches, chewing tobacco, and spitting?
• A rodeo enclosure where the bulls snort and manufacture cow patties as they wait to stomp some dumb cowboy’s head.

I have a hunch Herr Gabermeister’s version is all of these and more, kind of like a zoo with one giant enclosure where ambitious predators and ovine prey warily scope out one another. In politics, ambition trumps friendship and staff advisors are like appendages, useful only as things to blame when something goes amiss. Will self-interest be the ultimate demise of GN’s bullpen? Advisors are ambitious, too.

Newsom justifies his bullpen with interesting rationales for public consumption.

He thinks, for example, that his top advisors will work much better together than in cubicles of their own. Is he in for a surprise. Individuals thrown together in groups don’t work together. They spend a lot of time watching one another. The minute one picks up a phone, silence descends over the room like thick fog as everyone strains to listen.

Newsom also thinks he will have easy access to his assembled advisors, thus facilitating the immediate development of policies without memos flying around like confetti. He’s living in la-la land if he really believes paperwork will decrease. Instead of memos to one another or to Gav, his advisors will fill their desk drawers with ubiquitous “Memorandum for the Record,” an interesting bureaucratic innovation of long standing.

MFR’s, as they are commonly called, are notes to oneself recapping a conversation or a meeting for the purpose of covering one’s ass in case some ambitious SOB resorts to the “sandbagging” strategy. In a bureaucracy, a sandbagger is someone who has played a critical role in a decision or an action and then lies about it or stands silent when the shit hits the fan and some poor soul is splattered.

The story of The Caine Mutiny is a perfect example of sandbagging. Lt. Tom Keefer, a devious wordsmith who aspires to become a world-famous author, incites rather dull second-in-command, Lt. Steve Maryk, into removing erratic Captain Queeg from command without authority, a clear mutiny under Naval regulations. When Lt. Maryk’s court-martial inevitably rolls around, Lt. Keefer denies any involvement in the mutiny. Thankfully, a really brainy attorney gets Maryk off. But that’s fiction. Real life is a mite fuzzier.

If anyone believes sandbaggers like Keefer are rare, they are living in a fantasy world. In every group, at least one weasel absorbs everything and then at an appropriate moment, approaches the boss in private to report the daily doings.

I have a hunch that Newsom adopted Bloomberg’s bullpen idea for unstated reasons, such as a Machiavellian desire to make sure no individual or no power clique emerges to provide advice he doesn’t want to hear. Politicians are, if anything, ever alert for suspicious goings on. In a large, open room, the boss can easily spot who hangs with whom. In private cubicles, funny things happen.

One puzzling angle of Newsom’s move is a return to an ancient practice. The bullpen model of management originated when alpha cavemen squatted around an open fire and decided the fate of their clan. And of course, we all remember those old Western movies in which a hapless hunter, trapper, cowboy, or Army shavetail is captured or staggers into an Indian encampment where all of the chiefs gather around a fire and decide how many ponies the outsider has to ante up for a night with an Indian maiden.

And in the 20^th Century, business and government offices often were no more than large, open rooms with everyone in plain sight of the boss who sat comfortably behind a glass enclosure watching his underlings. The concept of offices and cubicles is a recent innovation based on the theory that people simply work better in a quiet environment. In other words, privacy is progressive thinking.

Now, Newsom wants to return to the golden age of yesteryear. What next? A horse-drawn muni?

A last thought: The zoo group isn’t going to work well together for another reason. They’ll spend a lot of time fighting over who controls that giant-sized television screen. Porn Channel 6 or Playboy? God. Decisions, decisions. Get out the MFRs.